MLB 10: The Show 30-Player Franchise Mode

Hey everyone, the MLB FE team here to bring you the first installment of the MLB 10: The Show blogs. For this entry, we’ll be talking about some of the details that have gone into the new 30-Player Franchise Mode.

One of our goals going into this year was to finally enable the ability to mimic your real-life counterpart rosters when in Franchise mode. In order to do so, we had to allow all 30 teams to be set for user control. Before we could even dive into that, we had to change up how profiles and options work.

In the past, we’ve allowed you to create a total of four profiles. With this new 30-Player control, we had to open the profile system up to accommodate the potential for a full 30 players. One of the biggest reasons was to have the ability to support up to 30 different option sets. So now you have the ability to create 30 different profiles, and assign any or all of them to your selected teams. If you want only one team to use a custom option set, assign a profile to only that team, and all other selected teams will use the Global options set.

After crossing the options hurdle, another area we needed to expand on was our player injury system. In order for you to have that true-to-life roster, we saw the need to allow you to manage your player injuries. We now support a system that allows you to select which players should be injured, choosing their injury type and injury duration. You can also choose to remove players from the disabled list at any point, ensuring your roster can be kept in sync with the actual club roster. In order to use this feature, you need to first set the Injuries option to manual.

During our design phase, we realized one important roster control aspect we desperately needed to add — Class-A rosters. This year you will now have a Class-A team roster to work with, giving you even more wiggle room when making roster decisions. The Class-A team cannot be taken in game, but you can use it as another 15 roster spots for your organization.

Once we finished addressing the tools vital for you to support your rosters, we looked at polish features. We came up with a new email system in Franchise mode to provide you with one convenient place to keep tabs on your organization needs. This email system will provide with you updates in a variety of areas, including day-to-day operations, roster related information, Minor League player updates, and league transactions. You will have the ability to cater your inbox by selecting which areas you want to be notified of, and which you don’t.

One last area expanded upon was the waiver system we implemented last year. We’ve added real-time waiver periods. Now when a player is placed on waivers, teams will have 48 hours to place a claim on the player. After the 48-hour period, the claiming team with the highest waiver priority is awarded the player. Teams are now able pass players through revocable trade waivers and, if he clears, can trade that player after the July 31st trade deadline. Also, when a player is designated for assignment, teams will now have 10 days to decide whether to release him, trade him, or if he clears waivers, assign him to the minor leagues. As was the case last year, we have a transaction handbook that you can visit at any point to familiarize yourself with all of the rules.

As you can see a lot of focus has been placed on providing you with all the tools necessary to keep your Franchise roster up-to-date with its real-life counterpart. These enhancements aren’t limited to only Franchise mode, and the same 30-player control can be found in Season mode.

How many stats will be available in the game now? We’ve only gotten basic stats for a while now. you’ve got the basics: G, AB, H, R, 2B, 3B, HR, RBI, BB, SO, TB, SB, CS, OBP, SLG, and AVG. but what about the others like SF, SH, HBP, IBB, GDP, TPA, NP XBH, SB%, GO, AO, GO/AO, OPS, etc.

and pitchers have TONS of stats. I’m a stat junkie and it really helps me make an informed decision on what players i put in. How can you possibly decide to play a Russell branyan player (pre 2009) without knowing his AB to HR ratio? these bits of information are vital to use players that didn’t get enough face time the year before.

aron luke can you please tell me that you put in a home run derby in this years installment, that could be played during the all star break, i know its some thing small but it would be a very fun thing to do when you get bored of playin regular exibition games

Hi MLB FE team. The game looks gorgeous as ever, even more so this year, but what I would like to see is a “swingstick” type interface for batting.

I know your game is more of a simulation and guessing the right pitch and location is true to the game of baseball, but I suck at it. I swing at every pitch and it just ends up being frustrating. Is there any chance for changes or options in the batting interface to make the game more accessible?

Aaron Luke are we still going to be able to edit all players attributes including names? Also is there any thought to maybe editting career stats, mlb experience, or changing a pitcher to a position player and vice versa? Thanks and I can’t wait for this game to come out.

This year’s installment is going to busting at the seams with realism. Thank you so much Sony San Diego Studio. I love this time of the year when all the new feature blogs are released weekly. Great job guys!!!

Thanks for the info…I love MLB The Show…Best Sports Game Period…I wish you guys would consider bringing co-op franchise to this already amazing game. (by co-op I mean 2 players controlling different players in one team, for example one is the pitcher and the other is the shorstop in defense and when it’s time to hit, both players can pre-select which players they wanna hit with down the batting order.) Thanks

There should be some way to integrate our online fantasy teams from yahoo or espn or other sites. Last year my friends and I had to manually make our rosters of our fantasy teams and that takes a long time.
Just something to think about.

Hey guys, I have a few questions about RTTS. The amount of training points u get is a little ridiculous. In 08, the amount of points u start off with was fine but the amount u get during games was way to little. 09 was just horrible all around- it’s impossible to make a good position player. I think u should get more points too start off with and it should be easier to get points during the games. Also, to be a little more realistic, I think ur potential should change depending on how good u do during the season rather than A no matter wat. My other problem with fielding. Nothing frustrates me more than wen a ball goes up the middle and I can’t at least stop the ball cuz I have to control the CF and not the SS or 2B. And also wen the ball goes down the lines and I try to dive with the 3Bman or 1Bman but they get a triple or double cuz I dive with the LF or RF. Another thing is wen a linedrive goes right towards and infielder but they dont catch it cuz they go to their cut off spots. Definitely the worst thing about the game. Please fix it!!

O- and also please update the game more for PS2. I wont be getting a PS3 till the summer (after the release of the game) so I’ll have to buy it for PS2 and I hate wen my brother gets it for his PS3 and gets all the cool new things such as the batting practices and other things but I dont get them cuz no one cares to add them to the PS2 version. That would be much appreciated

sorry for buggin u so much but I got some more suggestions and questions. Suggestions: #1) Change the baserunning controls in RTTS back to they were before 09. #2) I feel that in RTTS, u should have the option to play every play, even if u dont get the ball. It would make the game more realistic cuz u would never know wen the ball’s coming to u so u always have to be on ur toes. #3) Try not be so brutal/nice on the overall ratings. Ex: I feel Kurt Suzuki was underrated (as with other players)- Overall- B, Contact- B, Power- Either F or D, Fielding- B, Speed- D, Potential- B. In my opinion, these should be is ratings: Overall- High B or low A (possibly add in pluses and minuses), Contact- B, Power- D+ or C-, Fielding- A, Speed- C, Potential- A. He’s a great fielder (according to Tony Pena, he’s the best in the MLB at blocking balls in the dirt), a .275-.300 average, 15-20 HRs, and can maybe steal at most 5 bases. Other people were underated but he stands out the most to me. Also, people were overrated. I cant think of any in particular right now but some people were rated too good and need to be lowered.
As for questions, will u be able to call pitches as a catcher in RTTS for PS2 or just for PS3?

Hey Aaron Luke I Got Another In RTTS question Let Say If Your Created player won the rookie of the year award or an mvp will the announcers say it the following year and will teams want to sign you more and offer you more money because you won an award gold glove silver slugger mvp etc..

-Example Joe Ramdom During Line Up Card last year mvp winner is batting 3rd or Joe Random while stepping to the plate last years mvp winner

One thing i’d love to see in games is the big named Minor League players. As a Ranger fan last year, most of our young studs were in AAA and getting ready to move up. (Neftali Feliz, Derick Holland, Julio Borbon, Justin Smoak) Well i didn’t have the option of moving them up since they weren’t on the roster! So maybe ya’ll should take a look at some of the big named prospects, and put them in that game as well.

Also a suggestion for future games, what if for franchise mode you had an option for the direction your franchise is headed. Wither your a team in a Re-build mode (Pirates), an Up-and-Rising team(Rangers), or Playoff Contenders (Yankees). So, depending on the direction your team is headed, you have certain goals to achieve, in both the winter and the regular season. (I stole this from NBA Live lol)

Hey guys you want to know the difference between a great baseball game and a bad one? Well a bad one has to give out a million dollars in an in game contest to get people to buy it, and a good one just needs to be released to sell a butt-load of games!

My only significant issue with MLB 09 was player progression in franchise mode. Specifically, for a user’s MLB players, almost all player ratings decline during the year and are not recouped during the offseason. This is true only for user-controlled teams, and only at the MLB level (minors progression seems to work fine, as does progression at every level for CPU teams).

I have tracked this in detail with many different coaches/managers/players, and the unmistakable trend is that a user’s MLB players, with a few exceptions, will slowly lose their abilities each year regardless of coaching, training, player age, or player potential (although players with less than ‘A’ potential decline more swiftly).

Can you please provide information whether this issue has been corrected (or even looked at)? Thanks.

I know this isn’t the place but I would love too see a more modified batting stance selection mode for the create a player/RTTS character, such as not only picking stace but swing type and even better the Homerun cut scene such as being able to put any type of homerun celebration to anyones stance, this would also be nice to see what each player does during the homerun cut scene because I personally like to have a cool cut scene with my RTTS player but it takes forever to find a good one that is on a stance i like

“Online Season Leagues do not have the option of having CPU teams – they are limited to users only.”

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Well, I won’t be buying the game. All my 3 friends and I want is the ability to play the “offline franchise”, but online. I was doing this back in High Heat Baseball in 1999. So ridiculous that 10+ years later I still can’t do it. I just don’t understand what’s so hard about adding a few more human-controlled teams to the offline franchise, basically.

I am a baseball game addict, and just can’t seem to get enough of the SHOW series. From the last couple of years games, my only real gripe, and a pretty serious one, was injured players still counting against the 25 man active roster, and the 40 man roster not actually expanding until Sept. 4th or something. 2 minor things, but quite crippling when you couldn’t add players for the play-offs properly, and you became crippled once you had a couple injuries and couldn’t field a proper team. it became almost impossible to proceed when you only had 22 active spots or so, being force to have no bench so you could have enough pitching. Please let me know if these issues have been addressed, as they are of critical importance. aside from that, the attention to the franchise mode is so appreciated. thank-you

I also wanted to ask if there is any inclination to updating the player progression? It really has been dreadful, and didn’t really seem to be correlated to anything, or make sense. a somewhat relative progression month-month based on how they are playing would be great. there then maybe some benefit to rebuilding and working at signing good prospects.

Does this game have a “round robin” type online league where you can have 7 or 8 guys only playing each other in a league, or if we only have 8 people then the other teams have to be filled out by CPU players or other humans? Please help!!